Olympic shooting champion Abhinav Bindra and world record holder Gagan Narang won the first gold medal for the host in the Commonwealth Games on Tuesday.
As the day progressed, India added four more golds with wrestlers contributing three. The Indian shooting duo improved on its Games' record of 1189 in the men's air rifle pairs event by four points with a world-class performance. Narang shot 598 and Bindra 595.
Later, India excelled in wrestling when Ravinder Singh, Sanjay and Anil Kumar won a gold medal each to boost India's tally. Ravinder (60 kg), Sanjay (74 kg) and Anil (96 kg) won their gold medals in the Greco Roman category.
Though the competition in shooting was ordinary, both Bindra and Narang said it was not possible for them to approach the Games with any less seriousness than other major competitions.
India also won its second gold in shooting and two silver medals at the Karni Singh range in Tughlakabad, for a 100 per cent strike rate in four events for the day. Rahi Sarnobat and Anisa Sayyed beat the experienced Australian combine Lalita Yauhleuskaya and Linda Ryan by 10 points for the women's 25-metre sport pistol gold.
India won these two gold medals in the last edition as well in Melbourne in 2006, when the shooters bagged 16 gold medals in all.
The world champion in the prone event, Tejaswini Sawant, in partnership with Lajja Gauswami, could get only the silver medal in women's rifle 3-position event, six points behind Singapore. The men's 50-metre free pistol team of Omkar Singh and Deepak Sharma won the other shooting silver for India.
